The ICT Job Hunter Blog

Yesterday, I looked at some of the frustrations experienced by those graduates and school-leavers who find themselves cast adrift in the big wide world with no clue as to which direction to set sail.  As promised, today I want to take a look from the other perspective…that of the parents.

In some ways, it’s quite easy to see why youngsters think that parents ought to know better than to nag them about finding work.  After all, the parents are the ones with all the wisdom and the knowledge.  They know what the employment situation is like at the moment and so really they should cut their kids some slack, shouldn’t they?  Perspectives are funny things though.  I mean, you only have to sit on the opposite side of the same room to somebody else to get a different view of the world.

The first thing about parents, obviously, is that they are older.  Because of this, and the huge number of experiences and changes that they’ve been through during the course of their lives, in many cases they can’t remember the exact feelings that went along with leaving school or college and trying to find work.  Even if they can, those feelings probably pale into insignificance when compared to the births, deaths, marriages, divorces, house moves and everything else that’s happened in their lives.  When they look back that far, everything looks slightly grey and fuzzy, even if they’re not that old.  And anyway, what they’re looking back on is a different world.

Another thing about parents (and I know I’m generalizing here) is that they’re often not too keen on inactivity, and particularly the inactivity of others.  You can’t blame them of course, because they’ve had years and years of doing ‘stuff’.  They’ve had to juggle jobs, homes, bringing up families, looking after sick or elderly relatives and any number of other things.  Every day, for years on end, they’ve had responsibilities to take care of, bills to pay, cars to get fixed, lawns to mow.  Their adult lives have just been a flurry of activity, much of which hasn’t involved much pleasure.  What little time they’ve been able to take to just relax and chill out has been hard won.  That’s what they’ve come to know and often they forget that their children haven’t yet reached that stage in life.  They see them sitting around doing what they perceive to be nothing in particular and it’s almost as though there’s an automatic assumption that they must be shirking something important… and so they start to nag.

Probably the biggest thing about parents in this context though is that their own life experiences cause them to worry about their children.  Few parents will have sailed through life without financial worries and concerns and even if little else stands out in their memories, the times that they were hard up seem to stay with them forever.  When they watch their children grow up, the last thing they want is for them to have to experience the same.  They want them to be safe and secure and happy, and when they see them sitting around and not making ‘enough’ effort to go out and find themselves a job, they start to panic…and then they nag.  They don’t do it to be mean, they do it because they care.

Of course, when it comes to university, parents can sometimes be quite keen to see a return on their financial investment too.  I don’t mean that they want to be repaid what they’ve spent out, but that they want their investment to contribute to the happiness, well-being and prosperity of their children. 

As I said yesterday, most of the problems that come from a youngster being unemployed result from poor communication or a lack of it altogether.  Good communication has to come from both sides, however, and that involves putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and seeing things from their side rather than flying off the handle and biting back.

If you are a young person reading this, then it’s probably worth bearing in mind that your parents don’t nag you to go out and find a job because they want to be rid of you or even because they think you’re essentially lazy; they do it because they want to see you enjoying the best life that you’re capable of.  Talk to them.  Tell them what’s going through your mind, what your fears are and your disappointments.  Ask for their help.  They might not be the same generation as you, but they have much to offer in terms of support and guidance and years’ worth of experience to share.